How The Plunging Financial Markets Will Impact Ad Spending

By: David Kaplan | PaidContent.org

Throughout the past six months, global ad spending forecasts haven’t been revised down that much. Meanwhile, online ad growth has continued to look resilient. With stock market indexes plunging—the Dow Jones industrial average fell 512.76 points (4.31 percent) yesterday and the Nasdaq dropped 136.68 (5.08 percent)—fears that the U.S. economy might be heading for a double-dip recession have increased.

The painful jolt of the past nine trading sessions would appear to suggest that even the relatively anemic global ad spending projections—and the increasingly rosy online forecasts, such as eMarketer’s recent call for a 20.2 percent gain this year—appear a little too sanguine. But with economic signs having been so lousy all year long, maybe it’s the stock market that’s catching up to the reality that advertisers and agencies have already absorbed. In other words, it’s very possible that even in the face of a worsening economy, online advertising will not experience much of a reversal